Thursday, January 1, 2009

Not Faking…

This is Mike Ryan. He’s one of the coolest and most compassionate people I have grown to know this trip, and he and his wife Elaine are having a blast being here. But see this? This isn’t Mike just dozing off. Seriously. This is the combined result of 80 hours of travel time, awkward sleeping conditions, early mornings, late nights, later nights, fantastic (but unusual) food, new sounds, new sights, language barriers, seeing out of control poverty, and 10 hour days full of manual labor with little climate control and sometimes scarce resources (like water). Result? It’s really not uncommon to just simply fall asleep in the middle of… erm… well… anything. I actually fell asleep with my eyes open last night. I have no idea how it happened. I was actually set to speak to a church full of people, was looking at Raj, remember what I was looking at, and then a little girl sitting at my feet nudged my foot and handed my Bible back to me with sort of a sheepish grin on her face. Apparently, I had actually fallen asleep with my eyes open, dropped my Bible without realizing it, and actually startled “awake” (or whatever it was) when she gave it back to me. It’s why we train our teams so hard before we come here… India teams are open to many, but are tough. No way around it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mike,

Did you tell your team members that you do this at home too?

(This is a loving remark from one of Mike's younger brothers.)

Serious Note: Mike, very proud of you and Elaine.


Tim

Anonymous said...

Thats my Poppa! Working for Jesus until he falls asleep! Oh, PS if you can read this, we heard the baby's heartbeat today! Dr. says it's perfect. Wesley and I love you and are so proud of you and mom we are telling everyone who will listen. Love you,

Hillary